Alcrin

I'm not so sure; Todd's character has 999 points of health. How much damage would a fall like that give you in Oblivion? EDIT: Hey, take a look what I noticed: http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/2791/femaleheavyarmor.jpg First shot of female heavy armor we've seen. And the armor actually doesn't look half-bad! EDIT 2: Interestingly, the Staff of Magelight has a listed damage of 1... Maybe you can bash with staffs again!?

No. There's not going to be a demo, ever. This is just a re-edited version of the same thing we've seen at E3, right down to the exact camera changes and sword swings.

Bleh, it's just the golden claw thing. I think we should give up on seeing any more than what we got from E3 before launch day.

Character01 Nobody's gonna call you by name anyway...

Sauce?

Yes, but it's also a shout: Animal Allegiance I think the name was. The guy in the Xbox360Achivements.com demo found it on a word wall in a dungeon.

And you know this how? As far as I know, they haven't released the new encumbrance formulas for Skyrim yet. This makes the (huge) assumption that magic will not only be extremely powerful compared to melee/bows and will need something to balance it out, BUT that the best option to do this will be to not allow them to cast spells as efficiently while wearing armor. That may be true, but it's very irresponsible to assume such a thing before the game is even out. See how magic and armor actually interact in Skyrim before you complain about any changes to the formula that frankly haven't even been confirmed yet. We know next to nothing about how the new magic system works in general: It's no surprise we don't know specific details like how spellcasting in armor works.

Meh, most of the "lies" in the presented quotes are at the least very subjective. Do the people who claim about Oblivion being "not hardcore" really know what they actually want?

Well, dragons don't start appearing until a little bit of the ways into the main quest, so presumably if you go off the beaten path and start exploring as soon as you get out of the tutorial dungeon they'll never show up until you decide to do more of the main quest. So yes, you should be able to just ignore the main quest (Like spending the whole game running around with Caius's package in Morrowind or holding onto the Amulet of Kings forever in Oblivion.). Only be able to tell for sure though once we have the game for ourselves.

Meh, publishers love Steam because it means they have more control over what the consumer does with the game. It's the same reason consoles exist: It's purely a detriment to the consumer, but due to copyright it still lives anyway because your only choice is to go with whatever the publisher provides, break the law, or go completely without.

That always came to me as more of an animation so you could more easily see that a spell is being casted for gameplay reasons: In lore, so far as I know, spellcasting is purely mental/verbal. There are books talking about uttering charms and incantations to cast spells but none detailing complex hand or body poses that need to be made. And there is a benefit: Clothes don't provide any DR but don't reduce your speed. A worthwhile benefit? Maybe not, but it's there. I don't see any reason to arbitrarily punish spellcasting in armor except to encourage players to fit to the cliche.

Aaaaaaaaaahh!!! Kill it with fire! *casts Alcrin's Ultimate Firestorm, igniting everything flammable on the entire continent*

Grind quests like "Bring me 20 ectoplasms" are not welcome. EDIT: Neither are quests like "Check every rock in the overworld to see which random one has the Artifact of Great Value hidden inside."

I dunno, I think this might just be nostalgia working its magic. I played Oblivion first and I couldn't help but laugh at Morrowind's atronachs: They're just big bulky men with weird skin colors. A creature forged out of the pure elemental essence of frost is a bit more interesting (though this doesn't excuse flame atronachs being 10 year old girls...). And as for Dremora, the main problem with them was Bethesda tried to cheat and implement them as ordinary bipeds when the system really wasn't capable of handling them.

Honestly the thing with Wizards not being able to wear armor is a remnant of a poor attempt to nerf magic-users in D&D (that did absolutely nothing to reduce their superiority to other classes, btw, it took until 4E for the problem to be mostly fixed by just giving everyone Wizard-level powers). I don't see why wizards should have a spellcasting penalty if wearing armor, I mean the TES magic system doesn't even have somatic components!

Well, there's no way I'd be able to actually enjoy the game very much having only a few minutes to play it. The best way I could spend that time is to go through the menus and look at the stats and descriptions of things (like, oh, say, Destruction perks), and spending god knows how many hours traveling and waiting in line for that when the game is going to be available for everyone in just 2 months is... well it doesn't exactly sound like the best use of my time. Plus, I kinda have a phobia for crowds so there's no way I'd be able to enjoy the convention aside from the Skyrim stuff.

If I can punch a shark to death and then eat it, I will be very happy.

If anything magic is going to be more common now: Plenty of previews report bandits that use spells a lot. But I'm fine with basic spells being something anyone can do; Can everyone cast a spell powerful enough to one-shot Mehrunes Dagon? I don't think so. Besides, shock drains magicka in addition to doing damage, so what use would shock spells be if there weren't plenty of other wizards to fight?

Great, now I have a reason to watch X-Play :/

Nope. I'm going to be preloading off Steam if I can: Skyrim as soon as possible without even getting dressed!

Probably not. Stamping disks and shipping them out to stores doesn't take very long, and games can be put up on steam literally within a single afternoon. However, in terms of content, probably yes. I strongly doubt any new areas or new quests are going to be added between now and launch: The focus right now is definitely on putting the final polishing touches, squashing bugs, and optimizing the game (I hope).

Well, it's 2 months from release. There's only so much they can change about the game between then and now; They showed off their plans for Oblivion much earlier in the game's development. Plus, hopefully they've learned their lesson about doing that kind of crap.

Moar inspiration time! This is a real Native American (specifically, Tsimshan) staff. While it wasn't used for magical ceremonies, it still looks pretty cool.

We did get to see a trek through the mountains and an entire dungeon in the Quakecon leak, but it was very scripted: He didn't talk to anyone except for that one blacksmith in Riverwood and never ever went off on side paths: Just went straight to where the claw was and then to the end of the dungeon.

I dunno of anyone specifically making formal plans to start the project, but it's as inevitable as a nude patch.